"That said, if he continues to get pucks on goal they will start finding the twine eventually."

In fact, that streak wasn't the longest of his career and a streak of 42 shots is not something to be worried about in hockey - it's normal. Streaks happen - it's just part of luck. It's a difficult concept to wrap your head around - that one of the best players in the league can go so long without scoring simply due to luck, but it's a real and measurable phenomenon.

The first response in the comments section, and it's a common response in this discussion because "luck" is a mind-boggling answer to some, was:

Streaks are interesting phenomena. They are also very difficult to pin down with any language, be it spoken or mathematical. On top of that, the human brain seems to have evolved to recognize patterns, and we can spot them even where they don't exist. Children can't look at a cloud, a stipple ceiling or the grain in wood panelling without seeing an image. Ask one if you don't believe me.

Vic goes on to challenge the reader to re-arrange a pattern until it "seems properly random" and look at the results. It's a wondeful experiment, follow the link and take the challenge.

What I'm getting at is that though streaks, both bad and good, are hard to digest and understand, they are normal across any sample of events. Consider that prior to the beginning of Kessel's streak this year, he was a career 10.7% shooter. Given a sample of 42 consecutive shots, there is about a 1% chance that Kessel will not score a goal in that sequence of shots. There's about a 3% chance that Kessel will only score once in 46 shots, his totals after last night's streak-breaking game winner.

If Kessel's shot rates were dropping (they're up, actually) or his possession metrics falling apart (they're stable), there might exist a cause for concern. But they're not, and Kessel remains a highly effective player. While a streak like the one Kessel experienced seems unimaginable for Leafs fans, mathematically, it's not that improbable. It's just bad luck.

I still think something else is missing from this for me. As I understand, in the short term goals scored does not matter because random chance (luck) may dominate skill. But in the longer term skill should dominate luck. And luck can be positive or negative (unlucky) for which Kessel had a run of "bad luck". Also there is no statistical law that says Kessel will have a run of "good luck".

What we do know from probability is that over the longer term (large sample size of shot) then goal scored should better reflect skill (unless you are Gomez).

At any rate, putting this all together by the end of the season how many goals does Kessel need to score to "meet performance". That is, if the season ended today he would not meet expectation and by the end of the season his goal total should be his historic Shooting % times the # of shots attempted. That for me is the criteria of how he will be measured?

Kessel is a career 10.7% shooter. For him to finish with a strictly career average shooting percentage, and a steady shot rate over this season, would require him to shoot about 13.5% over the remaining 37 games. That is is only slightly higher than last season and lower than his best season in Boston.